to be difficult and bloody and the wilderness campaign and many, many lives would be lost, in a historical perspective, that was the beginning of the end of the war. and my sense, too, is that it resonates not on because of what happened there militarily in '63 but because of the words spoken there, what abraham lincoln did at that battlefield was to redefine the country, rededicate it, as he put it, to a jeffersonian principle. and when we look back on the civil war, it's fascinating to me that so much of our understanding of what it meant came from 1863, not from 1861. >> and, mike, you go to gettysburg and you see that line that marks the south's deepest advance into the north and i have to say as a southerner that grew up, it's hard to imagine that lee's armies ever got that deep into the union. >> yeah. pickett's charge up cemetery hill, i think you're referring to that. i agree with what john just said about the importance of gettysburg. and there's another caveat i think that's important about gettysburg and it's in our frame of reference of talking about wars, many americans, not g
